If this was a midlife crisis, it was better than those the Pregnant Six said their own husbands were experiencing—the growing of mustaches, of beards, the suddenly popular Caesar haircut, so awful with the hair brushed forward, short bangs fringing wide foreheads, ears pierced and strung with small silvery hoops, the purchases of the muscle cars of their youth, the motorcycles they had coveted but never owned. She hadn’t heard who might have stepped beyond their marital bonds, perhaps dallied with some nubile young woman two decades south of their ages, but that was typically part of the crisis. Martin had a new acquaintance at the hospital, a plastic surgeon named Larry Sumner, whose second wife was that nubile young thing, Miranda of the golden skin. Larry had left DC for Rhome, opened a new practice after his divorce, brought Miranda with him to the small and charming town. Miranda herself was not small, but very, very tall, some kind of graphic designer, and gorgeous.
Joan looked at Martin. Still so handsome, his dark hair just silvering along the edges, in good shape though he did nothing physical on any kind of consistent basis. All those nurses at the hospital, the women passengers on the planes that took him to all those countries where he shared his surgical expertise, operating on people in need, the flight attendants in their tight uniforms serving him his meals, bringing him drinks, though he said he never drank on the plane—how could he not indulge every so often as he told his tales of medical glory to his female seatmates and the women paid to be kind, attentive, adoring to first-class passengers like Martin—the chipper, shiny girls checking him in at the hotels he stayed at, asking whether he was alone, asking perhaps if he might want company for dinner, all the women fans garnered during his many recent appearances on live news programs in New York, discussing neuro-ocular medical breakthroughs, a result of the published article about him in Time. She had not, until this moment, considered the sheer number of women who might eagerly desire to be with him—his good looks, his good brain, his specialized fame potent allures. She had not, until that moment, considered how much time Martin had at his disposal for extramarital flings.
He and the boys were talking, their heads bowed over the architectural plans, and she thought again about how even Time had kept her the nameless wife. The young magazine journalist had been lazy, or perhaps held some antiquated notion that a woman, no matter her own accomplishments, was only a support in the background, for he had failed entirely to learn who she was. Hundreds of articles had been written about her and her prizewinning collections, including two in Time itself, and if the journalist had only lightly scratched the surface, he would have been inundated with material. She had not needed personal approbation in an article focused on Martin’s work, but in Time she was not even a cipher, just a ghost, and for a day or two it had annoyed her. A worse outcome would have been if she were identified as the once very famous writer who was now the longtime wife of the increasingly famous doctor. She would have loathed that. Better to be the ghost.
Martin caught her eyes, and she thought how disappointed all those women must be when their attempts to interest him in a covert drink, meal, or seduction failed. Joan knew his attention would never wander, for she possessed what Martin did not: detachment. The years had weakened it, but the remnants still clinging to her insides allowed her to do her work in private, as a secret. Perhaps that’s why she did not worry about what Martin did in his downtime in those exotic countries, or when he was in New York on his own, or stayed overnight at Rhome General: she could keep a secret and he never could.
If this house was what Martin wanted, so be it. She could not manufacture righteous indignation about the way his desire would skew her own private plans when he worked so hard and had accomplished so much in his professional life. She paid no attention to their bank accounts, to their 401(k)s, to the investment accounts he maintained in his and Joan’s names, to the college funds he had set up for the boys. She briefly glanced at the totals on their joint tax returns, then signed. He was entitled to this upheaval if the finished product would give him pleasure. But she knew she would be the one marshaling it through.
She felt for a moment that she were eighteen years in the past, working so arduously on The Sympathetic Executioners, wanting to finish that first novel before Daniel came along and stole her time, wanting her first novel to predate the first child. She had failed then, but she would not fail this time. The boys would be gone this summer, and she would figure out how to keep writing regardless of the sudden construction, would finish the novel before their return.
She would not—not yet—imagine that September might include excitement beyond Eric’s final year of middle school, beyond Daniel turning into a college freshman, the building of the new house, that the school year would bring her a transition of her own.
And it was true, aside from her suggestion that their bedroom be enclosed in glass walls, it was the house she would have built, resituated to take maximum advantage of the land, to do justice to the gardens lushly blooming from early spring, the vistas brought inside, made a part of the structure. It was the house she would have designed, had Martin asked her in advance, brought her into his plans.
*
She wrote vigorously until early May and then resumed all of her motherly duties. Shopping for graduation presents for Daniel, and the clothes and toiletries and the millions of other small things that Eric needed for computer camp, that Daniel required for his cross-country trip, helping them both pack for their time away, beginning to pack what Daniel would take to college. After Daniel’s graduation, that awkward party thrown by the Pregnant Six, which the Mannings attended: “The kids have known each other practically since birth, they ought to be sent off together,” Carla, Dawn, and Teresa had said. The three Manning men spent a weekend ferrying furniture and everything else the boys and Joan and Martin did not require for the coming months into a rented storage unit outside of town. Until they left, Daniel and Eric wanted to sleep in sleeping bags out on the grass, if the warm temperatures held.
On the morning of the boys’ departures, Joan’s car was out front, packed up with Eric’s suitcases, a box of computer stuff he had been working on, a bag of his favorite candy, a couple of nickels within; and Daniel’s backpacks were at the front door, ready to be thrown into the backseat of Martin’s car, later hefted through forests, carried along trails. He had packed light, taking only one book about the founding of the Federal Reserve Bank. He told Joan he would tear out the chapters as he finished them. “People always leave books behind when they camp, so I’m sure I’ll find others.” It was the first time Joan knew him to choose nonfiction over a great big novel.
“Everyone, out into the backyard,” Martin commanded, checking his watch, and they left the breakfast dishes on the table, and filed out the back door. The sun was high, the day warm, the sky a blue sheet, except for one puffy, square white cloud in the distance, like the insistent base of an exclamation point.
Through the side gate came a large bald man wearing aviator glasses and swinging two sledgehammers, one in each fist.